The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, visits the Mother and Child Health Center during a visit to engage with various stakeholders on ways in which conflict-related sexual violence can be addressed and prevented, in Mogadishu, Somalia, April 2, 2013. REUTERS/Tobin Jones/AU UN IST PHOTO

NEW YORK, April 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Armed extremist groups are now using sexual violence more than government-controlled groups in what is a "catastrophic" new trend in war zones, the United Nations expert on sexual violence and conflict said.

The groups include Boko Haram in Nigeria, al Shabaab in Somalia, al Qaeda in Mali and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Zainab Hawa Bangura, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

The development is "a catastrophic new trend of the use of sexual violence as a 'tactic of terror' by extremist groups", she said.

And, since these groups are non-state actors operating outside the rule of international law - and include fighters from many different countries - bringing them to justice poses a major challenge, she said.

Bangura spoke in prepared remarks to the U.N. Security Council on April 15 as that body met to discuss findings from the just-released 2015 annual report by the U.N. secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict.

While the report said sexual violence committed by state actors remains of "grave concern" in countries like Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Congo, it bluntly stated that "non-state actors account for the vast majority of incidents".

The report "for the first time articulates how sexual violence is integrally linked with the strategic objectives, ideology and funding of extremist groups", Bangura said.

Earlier in the week, Bangura spoke about this new challenge on a panel in New York following a screening of a BBC Arabic documentary, "Slaves of the Caliphate", which chronicles the sexual and other violence perpetrated on civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan by Islamic State militants.

"This is a problem the world has never faced," Bangura said of the prospect of bringing extremist perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict to justice.

It's one thing to bring commanders of state armed forces or state-sponsored groups to the International Criminal Court (ICC), she said.

But it's unclear what should happen to the fighters of "100 nationalities" joining extremist groups in places like Iraq and Syria, who include Australians, French, British and Americans, she said.

Should these foreign fighters be brought before the ICC, should they be tried in the country where the human rights violation was committed, or should they be tried in their home countries, she asked.

There is also a question of whether there are the proper legal tools in place for successful prosecutions, she added.

Dealing with non-state actors also poses challenges to NGOs trying to assist the victims of sexual violence, said panelist Karen Scriven, senior director for youth, gender and girls at Mercy Corps, a global aid agency for people affected by disaster and conflict.

The dangers posed by extremist groups have limited aid agencies' access to victims and constrained their ability to provide services, she said.

Meanwhile, the brutality of sexual violence in conflict was vividly portrayed in the BBC documentary. It focused on the plight of the Yazidi people, a religious minority in Iraqi Kurdistan, at the hands of Islamic State extremists who consider them devil worshippers.

The Yazidis practice an ancient religion that is a combination of Sufi Islam and Zoroastrianism and considered heretical by fundamentalist Sunni Muslims.

The Islamic State is believed to have kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women and girls, often raping them, forcing them into marriage with fighters, selling them into slavery or killing them if they refused to convert to Sunni Islam.

"There is no horror I haven't witnessed," said one Yazidi woman in the film. She described seeing Yazidi girls being bought, three and four at a time, as slaves.

Like others interviewed, she had escaped, been ransomed or released from captivity.

A pregnant woman described the women and men being separated when the Islamic State fighters came into their village. They told the men to lie down and then shot them to death, including her 24-year-old husband, she said.

"Then each Islamic State fighter took the hand of a Yazidi girl and led her away," she said. "It was harder than facing death."

The documentarians estimated that some 300 or more Yazidi women and girls have escaped or been released or ransomed from captivity since August 2014, but another 2,600 remain captives of the Islamic State.

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